


Not to Reason Why

by Celandine



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-25
Updated: 2008-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-12 12:15:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/124722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celandine/pseuds/Celandine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For fifty-three years, Hermione writes to a man who has disappeared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not to Reason Why

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a_d_medievalist](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=a_d_medievalist).



Hermione and Harry were the only two who realized that Snape was gone, not dead. At least, his body had disappeared from where it had fallen and no one claimed to have buried him. They talked about it a few times, speculating, and decided that if Snape wanted to be left alone they would let him make that decision for himself.

On impulse, Hermione tried writing to Snape three years later. She paid enough for a post owl to go to Australia, the highest rate, not knowing where on earth Snape might be, if indeed he really was still on earth at all. She received no reply, but her letter was not returned, either, and so she presumed that Snape was indeed out there somewhere.

After that she wrote to him once a year, for no reason that she could have explained. Usually she sent the letter in June; she had a vague thought that if he received her letters around Midsummer's Day, that would be appropriate. The anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts seemed far too depressing. In her tiny neat handwriting she told him the news of those in whom she thought he might be interested: his former colleagues, the students for whom he had been Head of House, the members of the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army. Every year she sent off her letter, expecting and receiving no reply, but her owls continued to come back empty-clawed, and so Hermione hoped that her efforts were received, perhaps even appreciated.

For fifty-three years she wrote. In the fifty-fourth year her letter came back. She wept, not knowing why, any more than she had ever known why she had written in the first place. Five decades of one-way conversations were surely nothing to mourn, and yet she did, sitting alone in the cottage she had purchased after Ron's unexpected and untimely death eight years before. She had healed from that loss, and she would heal from this one too.

When her weeping was over, Hermione washed her face and tidied her hair to go out to the shops for milk and bread and sausages for her tea. She opened the door and clutched at it, dizzy. By the gate at the end of the garden stood Severus Snape, unmistakable even after so many years and despite the changes time had wrought. His hair was all white now and he wore modern clothing instead of traditional wizards' robes, but she knew him, awkward among the delphiniums.

He gazed at her and she lifted her hand, beckoning. All the world and time itself seemed to vanish as she drew him inside and shut the door.  


**Author's Note:**

> Written for a_d_medievalist, who wanted Hermione and Snape and gave the prompt, "World enough, and time."


End file.
